Special Report | Rapport spécial: Whither ecosystem health and ecological medicine in veterinary medicine and education

Abstract

In Canada, the ecosystem approach/ecohealth evolved through the leadership of the International Joint Commission (IJC) and the institutional programs it supported which were given the task of protecting water quality of the Great Lakes basin ecosystem. While ecosystem management goals should reflect some measure of consensus, decisions may be conditional and subject to review due to uncertainty. The Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre (CCWHC, 1992) has nodes at each Canadian veterinary faculty and the Centre for Coastal Health. The governance mechanism for an ecosystem must be tailored to be adaptive to deal with new realities as they occur.